The McKettrick Legend: Sierra's Homecoming

Travis was building up the fire when Sierra opened her eyes the next morning. “Stay in your sleeping bag,” he told her. “It’s colder than a meat locker in here.”

Liam, lying between them through out the night, was still asleep, but his breathing was a shallow rattle. Sierra sat bolt-upright, watchful, holding her own breath. Not feeling the external chill at all, except as a vague biting sensation.

Liam opened his eyes, blinked. “Mom,” he said. “I can’t—”

Breathe, Sierra finished the sentence for him, replayed it in her mind.

Mom, I can’t breathe.

She bounded out of the sleeping bag, scram bled for her purse, which was lying on the counter and rummaged for Liam’s inhaler.

He began to wheeze, and when Sierra turned to rush back to him, she saw a look of panic in his eyes.

“Take it easy, Liam,” she said, as she handed him the inhaler.

He grasped it in both hands, all too familiar with the routine, and pressed the tube to his mouth and nose.

Travis watched grimly.

Sierra dropped on to her knees next to her boy, put an arm loosely around his shoulders. Let it work, she prayed silently. Please let it work!

Liam lowered the inhaler and stared apologetically up into Sierra’s eyes. He could barely get enough wind to speak. He was, in essence, choking. “It’s—I think it’s broken, Mom—”

“I’ll warm up the truck,” Travis said, and banged out of the house.

Desperate, Sierra took the inhaler, shook it and shoved it back into Liam’s hands. It wasn’t empty—she wouldn’t have taken a chance like that—but it must have been clogged or somehow defective. “Try again,” she urged, barely avoiding panic herself.

Outside, Travis’s truck roared audibly to life. He gunned the motor a couple of times.

Liam struggled to take in the medication, but the inhaler simply wasn’t working.

Travis returned, picked Liam up in his arms, sleeping bag and all, and headed for the door again. Sierra, frightened as she was, had to hurry to catch up, snatching her coat from the peg and her purse from the counter on the way out.

The snow had stopped, but there must have been two feet of it on the ground. Travis shifted the truck into four-wheel drive and the tires grabbed for purchase, finally caught.

“Take it easy, buddy,” he told Liam, who was on Sierra’s lap, the seat belt fastened around both of them. “Take it real easy.”

Liam nodded solemnly. He was drawing in shallow gasps of air now, but not enough. Not enough. His lips were turning blue.

Sierra held him tight, but not too tight. Rested her chin on top of his head and prayed.

The roads hadn’t been plowed—in fact, except for sloping drifts on either side, Sierra wouldn’t have known where they were. Still, the truck rolled over them as easily as if they were bare.

What if we’d been alone, Liam and me? Sierra thought frantically. Her old station wagon, a snow-covered hulk in the driveway in front of the house, probably wouldn’t have started, and even if it had by some miracle, the chances were good that they’d have ended up in the ditch some where along the way to safety.

“It’s going to be okay,” she heard Travis say, and she’d thought he was talking to Liam. When she glanced at him, though, she knew he’d meant the words for her.

She kept her voice even. “Is there a hospital in Indian Rock?” She and Liam had passed through the town the day they arrived, but she didn’t remember seeing anything but houses, a diner or two, a drug store, several bars and a gas station. She’d been too busy trying to follow the hand-drawn map Meg had scanned and sent to her by email—the McKettricks’ private cemetery was marked with an X, and the ranch house an uneven square with lines for a roof.

“A clinic,” Travis said. He looked down at Liam again, then turned his gaze back to the road. The set of his jaw was hard, and he pulled his cell phone from the pocket of his coat and handed it to Sierra.

She dialed 411 and asked to be connected.

When a voice answered, Sierra explained the situation as calmly as she could, keeping it low-key for Liam’s sake. They’d been through at least a dozen similar episodes during his short life, and it never got easier. Each time, Sierra was hysterical, though she didn’t dare let that show. Liam was taking his cues from her. If she lost it, he would, too, and the results could be disastrous.

The clinic receptionist seemed blessedly unruffled. “We’ll be ready when you get here,” she said.

Sierra thanked the woman and ended the call, set the phone on the seat.

By the time they arrived at the town’s only medical facility, Liam was struggling to remain conscious. Travis pulled up in front, gave the horn a hard blast and was around to Sierra’s side with the door open before she managed to get the seat belt unbuckled.

Two medical assistants, accompanied by a gray-haired doctor, met them with a gurney. Liam was whisked away. Sierra tried to follow, but Travis and one of the nurses stopped her.

Her first instinct was to fight.

“My son needs me!” She’d meant it for a scream, but it came out as more of a whimper.

“We’ll need your name and that of the patient,” a clerk in formed her, advancing with a clip board. “And of course there’s the matter of insurance—”

Travis glared the woman into retreat. “Her name,” he said, “is McKettrick.”

“Oh,” the clerk said, and ducked behind her desk.

Sierra needed something, anything, to do, or she was going to rip apart every room in that place until she found Liam, gathered him into her arms. “My purse,” she said. “I must have left it in the truck—”

“I’ll get it,” Travis said, but first he steered her toward a chair in the waiting area and sat her down.

Tears of frustration and stark terror filled her eyes. What was happening to Liam? Was he breathing? Were they forcing the hated tube down into his bronchial passage even at that moment?

Travis cupped her face between his hands, for just a moment, and his palms felt cold and rough from ranch work.

The sensation triggered something in Sierra, but she was too distraught to know what it was.

“I’ll be right back,” he promised.

And he was.

Sierra snatched her bag from his hands, scrabbled through it to find her wallet. Found the insurance card Eve had sent by express the same day Sierra agreed to take the McKettrick name and spend a year on the Triple M, with Liam. She might have kissed that card, if Travis hadn’t been watching.

The clerk nodded a little nervously when Sierra walked up to the desk and asked for the papers she needed to fill out.

Patient’s Name. Well, that was easy enough. She scrawled Liam Bres—crossed out the last part, and wrote McKettrick instead.

Address? She had to consult Travis on that one. Everybody in Indian Rock knew where the Triple M was, she was sure, but the people in the insurance company’s claims office might not.

Occupation? Child.

Damn it, Liam was a little boy, hardly more than a baby. Things like this shouldn’t happen to him.